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LISTENING
STUDY Question 66:
How can paper manufacturers account for "sustainably
harvested fibers" if they buy market pulp?
LISTENING
STUDY: Responses reference many methods of manufacturers
verifying sustaina-bility, including Best Management
Practices, Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification,
Forest Stewardship Council certification, and general
certification schemes.
Purchase
deinked market pulp or FSC-certified market pulp. Currently,
FSC is the only widely accepted international certification
program among independent environmental advocacy groups.
- Victoria Mills, Project Manager, Corporate Partnerships,
Environmental Defense
Georgia-Pacific
Wood & Fiber Procurement is committed to the implementation
of forestry Best Management Practices (BMPs) on all
lands where timber harvesting operations are controlled
by Georgia-Pacific foresters. Wood & Fiber Procurement
will promote the use of BMPs by all suppliers delivering
fiber to a Georgia-Pacific manufacturing facility. Thus,
Wood & Fiber Procurement will:
- meet state BMP standards at a minimum and may exceed
where appropriate.
- actively participate in state-level processes to review
and further develop technically sound BMPs.
- periodically conduct compliance assessments to ensure
consistency with recommended practices, on tracts where
harvesting is controlled by GP foresters.
- provide verifiable information to evaluate the results
of GP's promotion of reforestation and BMPs across the
procurement system.
- will not knowingly buy timber directly from landowners,
loggers and suppliers who refuse to practice BMPs as
outlined in their state.
- use appropriate aesthetic methods to minimize the
visual impact of our harvesting operations.
- will not knowingly purchase timber that has been acquired
or harvested in a manner not in compliance with the
law, statues, or regulations of the area in which the
timber is procured. - Georgia
Pacific
Wood certainly won't vanish from the international paper
stream in the near or possibly long-term future. So,
is there a way to ensure that timber harvested in "working"
forests has as minimal an ecological impact as possible?
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification has emerged
as the international standard of choice among the environmental
community as it requires an independent party to evaluate
a company's activities in the field. FSC guidelines
offer numerous checks and balances to reconcile intensive
rotational harvesting and biodiversity protection inside
the boundaries of a working forest. - Imhoff 1999
Manufacturers
would need to investigate their fiber sources and audit
their environmental standards and certifications that
the supplier adheres to. - International Paper
Require
pulp mills to certify content. - Robert R. Bryan,
Forest Ecologist, Maine Audubon
They
need to purchase Forest Stewardship Council-certified
pulp. - Susan Hammond, Executive Director, Silva
Forest
Foundation Chain-of-custody documentation. - Frank
Locantore, Co-op America
Stora
Enso North America surveys all of its pulp suppliers
to gather information on the sources of fiber in its
purchased pulp. This can also be done with a Chain-of-Custody
(CoC) certificate provided by the pulp supplier. The
CoC certificate is a third party certificate that guarantees
that a certain percentage of fiber content comes from
certified forests. - Stora Enso
The
growing concern over forest management practices has
contributed to an expansion of certification initiatives
in the 1990s. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) sponsors
the best known and most credible certification program.
FSC accredits certifiers who, at the request of companies
wishing to use the FSC logo, audit forest management
practices and certify products for the entire chain
of custody, from forest to transport to processing.
FSC-certified forests must follow strict standards set
forth in regionally specific principles and criteria
for sustainable forest management. In late 1998, the
first U.S.-produced paper containing FSC third-party-certified
wood pulp arrived on the market. - Abramovitz 1999
The
claim associated with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative
(SFI) secondary producer's label is that the manufacturing
unit procures a substantial amount of its materials
from independently third-party certified sources (2/3rds
minimum). This does not imply that any or all of the
material originates from an SFI-certified forest. Depending
on the facility, the material content of the product
could originate from a variety of sources, which include:
(1) specific forest tracts managed in conformance with
the SFI Standard or other acceptable standards, including
all forest tracts owned or controlled by the manufacturer;
(2) a procurement system certified to be in conformance
with the SFI Standard; or
(3) a combination of these two.
In all cases, a qualified
independent third party confirms the content.
Material purchased through
a certified procurement system generally originates
from land owned by one of the over ten million private
forest landowners in North America. The SFI Standard
requires SFI participants to actively engage in efforts
to educate landowners, as well as the professionals
that harvest the wood, in the importance of sustainable
forestry and the methods by which it should be practiced.
- American
Forest and Paper Association
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